D-Day 75: Owning An Entire News Cycle

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The Challenge

All the world’s eyes were on Allied troops as they landed on the shores of Normandy on June 6, 1944 – the large-scale military invasion that foreshadowed the end of World War II. Seventy-five years later, The National WWII Museum in New Orleans commemorated this historic landing with a series of special events and programming in New Orleans and Normandy, France. We worked with agency partners NJF to drive local and national awareness for the Museum’s commemorative initiatives in order to position the Museum and its expert leaders as go-to resources for WWII historical commentary, increasing website traffic, awareness of the Museum’s travel programs and to drive Museum visitation.

The Action

We worked with NJF to create a comprehensive public relations campaign plan in order to secure feature placements in targeted major broadcast, print and online publications. NJF then worked with Senior Historian Robert Citino on a media tour in New York City with 11 top-tier media outlets (including The New York Times, TIME, AFAR and CBS News). NJF then secured an exhaustive series of interviews with additional museum historians, spokespeople and WWII veterans around each of the museum’s D-Day initiatives. NJF and our Museum team also hosted media in both Normandy and New Orleans and coordinated the logistics and execution of an additional 20 interviews on the ground in New Orleans and 30 in Normandy, leading up to and culminating on the anniversary.

Results

This monumental campaign saturated national media, catapulting web and social media traffic, museum membership, and admissions as well as consumer awareness of the Museum’s mission and offerings.

The results were beyond our highest expectations. Seeing Rob Citino on CBS This Morning and then realizing we made Page 1 of The New York Times on the same day is something I personally will never forget.

  • This campaign won the top prize of the HSMAI Adrian Awards, Best of Show PR
  • 1.3 billion media impressions, $46,481,350 ad equivalency
  • 132 national broadcast segments reaching 192 million (two-hour CBS News Special Report with museum historian as co-anchor, CBS This Morning, 3 Fox News segments, features on CNN and PBS)
  • 13 national print placements; 18 million media impressions (The New York Times front page, above-the-fold cover story)
  • 102 online placements; 1.12 billion impressions
  • Website traffic hit highest daily record (39,315) on 6/5, doubled on 6/6 to 74,960 unique visits. Broke all-time June record with 480,000 site visitors
  • June 2019 also broke record for museum visitation; generated 37% increase in online donations, 16% increase in donated online revenue

Recognition

  • HSMAI Adrian Awards
    • BEST OF SHOW PR WINNER | Platinum | Gold | Owning an Entire News Cycle: D-Day 75
    • Gold | Landing A Front Page Cover Story on The New York Times
    • Gold | The Historian Becomes the Co-Anchor on CBS This Morning
    • Gold | CNN Feature Segment
  • PRSA Silver Anvil
    • Winner | Campaigns: Owning an Entire News Cycle: D-Day 75

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